IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5947.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Teachers' Salaries in Latin America: How Much Are They (Under or Over) Paid?

Author

Listed:
  • Mizala, Alejandra

    () (University of Chile)

  • Nopo, Hugo R.

    ()

Abstract

This paper documents the extent to which teachers are underpaid vis-à-vis workers in other professional and technical occupations in Latin America circa 2007. These labor earnings differences, attributed to observable socio-demographic and job characteristics, are assessed using a matching methodology (Ñopo, 2008). Teachers' underpayment is found to be stronger than what has been previously reported in the literature, especially among pre-school and primary teachers. Nonetheless, behind the region averages there is an important cross-country heterogeneity. Teachers' underpayment is more pronounced among males, older workers, household heads, part-timers, formal workers, those who work in the private sector, and (mostly) among those with complete tertiary education. Two amenities of the teaching profession, namely the longer job tenure and the flexible job schedules within the year, are also explored. Even after accounting for the possible compensating differentials of these two amenities, teachers' underpayment vis-à-vis that of other professional and technicians prevail.

Suggested Citation

  • Mizala, Alejandra & Nopo, Hugo R., 2011. "Teachers' Salaries in Latin America: How Much Are They (Under or Over) Paid?," IZA Discussion Papers 5947, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp5947.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Asadullah, Mohammad Niaz, 2006. "Pay differences between teachers and other occupations: Some empirical evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 1044-1065, December.
    2. Dale Ballou & Michael Podgursky, 1995. "Recruiting Smarter Teachers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(2), pages 326-338.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Teachers’ Salaries in Latin America: How Much Are They (Under or Over) Paid?
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2011-09-21 19:03:13
    2. Teachers’ Salaries in Latin America: How Much Are They (Under or Over) Paid?
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2011-09-21 19:03:13
    3. Y tú, ¿quieres que tus hijos sean docentes?
      by Hugo Ñopo in La educación de calidad es posible on 2014-02-15 01:40:18
    4. Y tú, ¿quieres que tus hijos sean docentes?
      by Hugo Ñopo in Foco Económico on 2014-02-18 03:00:15

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barbara Bruns & Javier Luque, 2014. "Great Teachers : How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean--Overview," World Bank Other Operational Studies 19507, The World Bank.
    2. Balcázar, Carlos Felipe & Nopo, Hugo R., 2014. "Broken Gears: The Value Added of Higher Education on Teachers' Academic Achievement," IZA Discussion Papers 8477, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    3. Alejandra Mizala & Hugo Ñopo, 2014. "Measuring the Relative Pay of Latin American School Teachers at the turn of the 20th Century," Working Papers 2014-15, Peruvian Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wage differentials; professional labor markets; Latin America;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations
    • J8 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5947. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Fallak). General contact details of provider: http://www.iza.org .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.